Give Me Freedom
by that tanned idiot
Summary: There's a reason senses are relied on for survival, as they reveal quite a lot. They can even show what the heart is withholding: love. - 5 drabbles based on the 5 senses showcasing Chihiro and Kohaku's reunion and what happens after.
1. Touch

**A Note Before the Story**: I want to try making a tale from drabbles (each chapter will be exactly 500 words long), so here we go! Feedback/reviews are adored and really motivate me, so if you'd be so kind as to indulge me.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Spirited Away.

* * *

**I**. Touch

.

He's nice, this boy who likes me.

He's normal and that's what I like and need. There isn't that profound love which makes me imagine that the wind rippling through my hair is actually his generous and kind fingers. Fingers that I had felt what seems like a lifetime ago; fingers that had grasped onto my hand with life before he'd let go and I went back to where we thought I belonged.

So when this black haired boy with a wide smile and adjourning dimples asks me to be his girlfriend, I say yes.

His touch is initially tentative, and I commend him for fighting overwhelming hormones for me. He is careful because he knows that I'm different. I'm the smart one whose art subjects make the teacher bit her lip to hold back comments on my peculiar nature.

He's understanding when he takes me to parks rather than crowded theaters with movies that fail to convey true wonder for me. When the cherry blossoms bloom on the river bank he takes me on and I lift my head to kiss him in thanks.

I remember his shock at my lips on his, but it only takes a moment for him to give me a kiss of his own and a small spark ignites below my ribs. I can't differentiate it between lust or affection, but I go in to his room later that day regardless.

First we talk, and then he's moved from his chair to sit on the bed aside of me and he's leaning over, his breath warm against my ear as he asks if this is ok. I move my head towards him and I feel my hair slide over my shoulder to my back, my shirt uncomfortably sticking to my back.

I look into his brown eyes and I tug on a smile. I reach up a hand to trail across his forehead and through his short hair, and suddenly he's kissing me again.

And when this boy's, this human boy's, fingers grasped the base of my ponytail, to try and pull the glittering band away so he can let my hair loose and grab onto it in passion, I suddenly feel that the room is too small, too crowded of worldly possessions and full of countless dark shades.

I want to push him away, but when his hand moves to grasp my hip that nausea is overwhelmed with desire for some sort of connection to another. It's been hundreds of days since I've felt a touch filled with emotion like this.

Not since Kohaku let go of my hand.

Later, when I'm back home and in the shower, feeling the pounding water on my hair before it trickles down my back, I feel like I just cheated. Even with this water flowing over me in rivers, I feel dirtier than ever.

Crouching down so I can convince myself the liquid flowing down my face is only water, I wish yet again to fly.


	2. Sight

**II**. Sight

.

It is beautiful here, but not for me.

There are flowers blooming in this short Spring season and there are wispy birds of black, white and primary colors that float on the balmy currents, their wings wide and beaks open to squawk at each other. Once I tried to fly with them, but they flew off in fear of my fangs and impending horns.

The bathhouse had never been so joyous, so full of life with smiling customers and attendants alike, but my face is still stuck in that polite indifference because the only person who can make me truly smile is in a place I cannot grasp anymore. When my river was killed through suffocation of cement and multi-floored apartments my place in that world went along with it. I know one day those structures will crumble and fall, as nothing is forever, but I hope that I will revive as well.

I don't know if there's too much damage to make up for.

I don't know when I'll be able to fullfill my promise and that makes me take to the skies and roar.

The days blur on the horizon and suddenly Yubaba is retiring to teach her son magic (who towers in the door-frames and had to have a specialty bath made) and to inherit the bathhouse from me in years to come. And while I did not feel trepidation about running the bathhouse, I didn't notice for a how it took up my life.

Always having a place to fly to, a customer to nod at - it was almost as mindless as not having my name.  
I know what is missing but I try to ignore it.

I like to return to that spot where she remembered her name, all because of that flimsy card, and had cried while eating enchanted rice. I'd never, still to this day, seen such large tears of remorse and flooding emotion; they had gushed out and had entrapped me as they fell.

Some days I duck my head like she had done and try to cry, too, but I can't seem to anymore.

I miss Chihiro.

It's as plain as sunlight and as simple as the flowers around me that bend to my touch.

I still try to ignore this gnawing desire but it's really all for nothing. I can't ignore the pangs in my chest, like my ribs are constricting my heart - trying to tell me something that my eyes cannot see.

It's my vivid memories and the spurred imagination from them that betray me. When I fly I can feel her hands through my mane, I can see her eyes that light up in my presence and the small hand that I used to hold.

Now when I look at the surface of water I see her face reflected back at me. I whisper her name and watch as her face ripples and vanishes from me.

I sigh before getting up.

There is work to do.


	3. Hearing

**III**. Hearing

.

The girl didn't hear the sickening crack of her bones when the car hit her.

Chihiro realized she didn't feel any pain, too, as she blinked her eyes open to look at the skewed world. She saw the streak of the red against the grey cement and figured the car must have thrown her with its momentum. She flew, but had missed it.

It made her cry out and attempt to get up.

But there are others around her who keep her down to stop her already broken body from further falling apart. The young woman didn't know these faces that blur, but she heard the hysterical screams of her friend. The friend she pushed out of the way when she'd seen that car screeching around, too fast to stop even for two pretty pedestrians.

Then there was flashing lights and the strangers left to let men dressed in white uniforms lift and carry her away; her painted red lips move to try and talk, but nothing comes out but strangled breaths. And while they thought Chihiro was a strong young woman she is in truth weak; weak from reality she's become disconnected to.

They're now ripping open her dress and Chihiro wanted to yell not to. It's one of the last gifts her parents gave her before they'd passed and she treasured it. But these people didn't know and care as they're only concerned with sustaining her ebbing life.

She noticed now that the yells of the people and the sirens are gone and it made a few more tears seep out from her tightly shut eyes. All she heard now was the dull heartbeat behind her broken ribs that's somehow refusing to give up.

Suddenly, as she listened to her life drumming softly, a memory that began on a hot, sticky day when she'd been young swam to the surface. A small sparrow had directly flown into a window of their blue house and she'd sprinted out. She crouched to try and help it as it stumbled away from her, it's wings fluttering pathetically against the soft green grass. She had been afraid of hurting it further, so she watched with sad eyes as it fumbled around before it went still, it's puffing chest showing its exhaustion.

Chihiro picked it up then and took it inside where she placed it in a towel-cushioned shoe-box. She showed her parents, but they didn't show much interest. Maybe now she knew why, as she laid bleeding; they had seen it had been hit too hard for it to get back up and survive.

She remembered waking up the next morning, eager to see how the bird was, only to find it was gone. The girl had been ecstatic, but now Chihiro thought that her sheltering parents took it out before she'd woken.

Crying because she was now exactly like that little bird who couldn't fly anymore, Chihiro felt her heart stutter.

His promise, _his promise-_

And then it stopped; she heard nothing.


	4. Smell

**IV**. Smell

.

Kohaku wondered why it was raining.

It was probably that kooky river God who often came by now (asking what happened to the human girl) trying to tell him something. Yet all the young dragon knew for sure was that this rain was an annoyance because it washed so many scents away, making him feel vulnerable and unaware.

Maybe he would like the rain more, like he used to, if his river was still alive and he could visit the human world. But now it just worried him about preparations in the bath house and if he would still be able to relax in one of the steaming baths tonight.

Yet there's a problem, as a servant explained through pants, of a solitary human spirit standing at the end of the bridge. To this, Kohaku sighed before stating to do the usual and direct the spirit to the boats on the shore for their assignment.

But then the servant said that it was Sen.

It was all Kohaku ever needed to hear.

His eyes widen as he looked across for the girl he fell in love with to find a young woman. But as he took slow steps over the wooden bridge on bare feet, he saw through the skewing curtains of water the crimson covering her.

Chihiro smiled as he approached her on the other side of the bridge, and it almost broke Kohaku's heart.

When he came to stand in front of her, his height looming to her own and clear eyes blinking down at her dull ones, he pulled her into a hug and they simply held each other. He told her how sorry he was in his inability to see her, but she only shook her head and pulled away to show him a wider smile.

Despite the rain, despite how he wanted to finally laugh for the first time in years and despite how she had just died, Kohaku kissed her.

And while he moved his lips against her own, Chihiro believed that he was breathing life back in to her. And she knew that while she wasn't alive in the sense she had been conditioned to believe, she'd finally awoken.

The rain continued to pour and Kohaku noticed when he pulled away from her that the metallic smell of blood was falling away and he felt her spiritual life flare - she was becoming connected to this world yet again.

She was becoming connected to him.

Yet this time she was here to stay and he wouldn't have to watch her turn away, his hand tightening at his side to try and prolong her warmth. He let out a deep laugh and Chihiro was shocked for a moment before her lighter one joined in and Kohaku couldn't stop his grin, even if he felt ridiculous and as young when as he'd first saved her.

Chihiro took his hand and they walked over the arcing bridge together, finding salvation in the refreshing scent of rain.


	5. Taste

**V**. Taste

.

When Kohaku and Chihiro were married, a large number of spirits showed up in interest. The open temple setting was crowded and elbows (and other appendages) were shoved to try and get a better place to watch the old tradition.

Some of them were truly intent on witnessing their friend's love finally be shown, while most showed up to try and understand it. A useless dragon and a passed human spirit being united; they did not understand it.

At least not until they saw the two together.

Their eyes followed the two bodies and watched as their hands seemed so fragile, so physically weak to this choice.

No one understood them until they saw their palpable true love.

It bloomed across their face and made the people in the room hold their breath. Their gracious aura seemed to purify the air, to make the air seem unrealistically sweet.

When they kissed, some strangers wondered what this love tasted like and turned away in longing.

Yet the days that passed after their bonding were more glorious and grand then that faithful, singular day. Because while their union had been affirming their love, it did not mean it could not continue to grow.

There were endless times when they would take to the sky together, Kohaku's larger, longer body of gleaming silver scales supporting Chihiro's own grown one. His mane was long and mixed with her own dark locks as they twisted and smiles erupted again to their faces, his long whiskers fanning to brush her flushed cheeks.

She, in return, would grasp his horns tighter to turn her knuckles white and lean down to whisper in his flickering ear. He would rumble his thanks for her praises and twist higher, past the clouds.

And while their love turned old through the raising of the sun and cycles of the moon, there was an innocent touch that resisted to dim.

It was when he reached for her hand to hold.

Chihiro found it endlessly amusing how a powerful being like Kohaku enjoyed holding her hand so much, she was all too willing to oblige.

His artful, long fingers would brush against hers and send shivers down her spine; she would brush her thumb across his knuckles and his chest would rumble to release a growl of agreement.

They held hands as if to make sure the other was still there and feel the other in their sure grasp. That neither weren't have to go anywhere alone ever again; the other would naturally be pulled along.

On rainy days they don't do much; they simply savor in his cascading element in each other's supportive arms.

And when, on the anniversary of when they'd reunited, Chihiro asked him why the rain tasted salty, Kohaku replied that it was a human trait he'd picked up from her.

He was crying in happiness.

And while her laughter cut across the steady lull of rain, Kohaku dipped his head to taste her lips for the endless time.

.

_Fin_


End file.
